Friday, April 18, 2008

Vitamin D, Calcium & Colon Cancer

A clinical study on 92 patients suggests that supplementing diet with calcium and vitamin D appear to increase the levels of a protein called Bax that controls programmed cell death in the colon. More Bax might be pushing pre-cancerous cells into programmed cell death.

The studies of colorectal biopsy samples are part of a ten-year multi-center study of the effects of increased vitamin D and calcium and biomarker-guided treatment of colon cancer recurrence. This effort is to identify a portfilio of measurments that together can gauge someone's risk of getting color cancer. The study involves almost 2,500 people nationwide who have regular colonscopies.